The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter (5 page)

Walker said, ‘The lawyer tells me that the estate will be settled finally in about six weeks. We can leave any time after that.’

We discussed the trip often. Walker was not too much concerned with the practical difficulties of getting the gold, nor with what we were going to do with it once we had it. He was mesmerized by the millions involved.

He said once, ‘Coertze estimated that there were four tons of gold. At the present price that’s well over a million pounds. Then there’s the lire—packing cases full of the stuff. You can get a hell of a lot of lire into a big packing case.’

‘You can forget the paper money,’ I said. ‘Just pass one of those notes and you’ll have the Italian police jumping all over you.’

‘We can pass them outside Italy,’ he said sulkily.

‘Then you’ll have to cope with Interpol.’

‘All right,’ he said impatiently. ‘We’ll forget the lire. But there’s still the jewellery—rings and necklaces, diamonds and emeralds.’ His eyes glowed. ‘I’ll bet the jewels are worth more than the gold.’

‘But not as easily disposed of,’ I said.

I was getting more and more worried about the sheer physical factors involved. To make it worse, Walker wouldn’t tell me the position of the lead mine, so I couldn’t do any active planning at all.

He was behaving like a child at the approach of Christmas, eager to open his Christmas stocking. I couldn’t get him to face facts and I seriously contemplated pulling out of this mad scheme. I could see nothing ahead but a botched job with a probably lengthy spell in an Italian jail.

The night before he was to go to the lawyer’s office to sign the final papers and receive his inheritance I went to see him at his hotel. He was half-drunk, lying on his bed with a bottle conveniently near.

‘You promised you wouldn’t drink,’ I said coldly.

‘Aw, Hal, this isn’t drinking; not what I’m doing. It’s just a little taste to celebrate.’

I said, ‘You’d better cut your celebration until you’ve read the paper.’

‘What paper?’

‘This one,’ I said, and took it from my pocket. ‘That little bit at the bottom of the page.’

He took the paper and looked at it stupidly. ‘What must I read?’

‘That paragraph headed: “Italians Sentenced”.’

It was only a small item, a filler for the bottom of the page.

Walker was suddenly sober. ‘But they
were
innocent,’ he whispered.

‘That didn’t prevent them from getting it in the neck,’ I said brutally.

‘God!’ he said. ‘They’re still looking for it.’

‘Of course they are,’ I said impatiently. ‘They’ll keep looking until they find it.’ I wondered if the Italians were more concerned about the gold or the documents.

I could see that Walker had been shocked out of his euphoric dreams of sudden wealth. He now had to face the fact that pulling gold out of an Italian hole had its dangers. ‘This makes a difference,’ he said slowly. ‘We can’t go now. We’ll have to wait until this dies down.’

‘Will it die down—ever?’ I asked.

He looked up at me. ‘I’m not going now,’ he said with the firmness of fear. ‘The thing’s off—it’s off for a long time.’

In a way I was relieved. There was a weakness in Walker that was disturbing and which had been troubling me. I had been uneasy for a long time and had been very uncertain of the wisdom of going to Italy with him. Now it was decided.

I left him abruptly in the middle of a typical action—pouring another drink.

As I walked home one thought occurred to me. The newspaper report confirmed Walker’s story pretty thoroughly. That was something.

It was long past lunch-time when. I finished the story. My throat was dry with talking and Jean’s eyes had grown big and round.

‘It’s like something from the Spanish Main,’ she said. ‘Or a Hammond Innes thriller. Is the gold still there?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t read anything about it in the papers. For all I know it’s still there—if Walker or Coertze haven’t recovered it.’

‘What happened to Walker?’

‘He got his two thousand quid,’ I said. ‘Then embarked on a career of trying to drink the distilleries dry. It wasn’t long before he lost his job and then he dropped from sight. Someone told me he’d gone to Durban. Anyway, I haven’t seen him since.’

Jean was fascinated by the story and after that we made a game of it, figuring ways and means of removing four tons of gold from Italy as unobtrusively as possible. Just as an academic exercise, of course. Jean had a fertile imagination and some of her ideas were very good.

In 1959 we got clear of our indebtedness to the bank by dint of strict economy. The yard was ours now with no strings attached and we celebrated by laying the keel of a 15-tonner I had designed for Jean and myself. My old faithful
King Penguin
, one of the first of her class, was all right for coastal pottering, but we had the idea that one day we would do some ocean voyaging, and we wanted a bigger boat.

A 15-tonner is just the right size for two people to handle and big enough to live in indefinitely. This boat was to be forty feet overall, thirty feet on the waterline with eleven feet beam. She would be moderately canvased for ocean voyaging and would have a big auxiliary diesel engine. We were going to call her
Sanford
in memory of old Tom.

When she was built we would take a year’s leave, sail north to spend some time in the Mediterranean, and come back by the east coast, thus making a complete circumnavigation of Africa. Jean had a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘Perhaps we’ll bring that gold back with us,’ she said.

But two months later the blow fell.

I had designed a boat for Bill Meadows and had sent him the drawings for approval. By mishap the accommodation plans had been left out of the packet, so Jean volunteered to take them to Fish Hoek where Bill lives.

It’s a nice drive to Fish Hoek along the Chapman’s Peak road with views of sea and mountain, far better than anything I have since seen on the Riviera. Jean delivered the drawings and on the way back in the twilight a drunken oaf in a high-powered American car forced her off the road and she fell three hundred feet into the sea.

The bottom dropped out of my life.

It meant nothing to me that the driver of the other car got five years for manslaughter—that wouldn’t bring Jean back. I let things slide at the yard and if it hadn’t been for Harry Marshall the business would have gone to pot.

It was then that I tallied up my life and made a sort of mental balance sheet. I was thirty-six years old; I had a good business which I had liked but which now I didn’t seem to like so much; I had my health and strength—boat-building and sailing tend to keep one physically fit—and I had no debts. I even had money in the bank with more rolling in all the time.

On the other side of the balance sheet was the dreadful absence of Jean, which more than counter-balanced all the advantages.

I felt I couldn’t stay at the yard or even in Cape Town, where memories of Jean would haunt me at every corner. I wanted to get away. I was waiting for something to happen.

I was ripe for mischief.

A couple of weeks later I was in a bar on Adderley Street having a drink or three. It wasn’t that I’d taken to drink, but I was certainly drinking more than I had been accustomed to. I had just started on my third brandy when I felt a touch at my elbow and a voice said, ‘Hallo, I haven’t seen you for a long time.’

I turned and found Walker standing next to me.

The years hadn’t dealt kindly with Walker. He was thinner, his dark, good looks had gone to be replaced by a sharpness of feature, and his hairline had receded. His clothes were unpressed and frayed at the edges, and there was an air of seediness about him which was depressing.

‘Hallo,’ I said. ‘Where did you spring from?’ He was looking at my full glass of brandy, so I said, ‘Have a drink.’

‘Thanks,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll have a double.’

That gave me a pretty firm clue as to what had happened to Walker, but I didn’t mind being battened upon for a couple of drinks, so I paid for the double brandy.

He raised the glass to his lips with a hand that trembled slightly, took a long lingering gulp, then put the glass down, having knocked back three-quarters of the contents. ‘You’re looking prosperous,’ he said.

‘I’m not doing too badly.’

He said, ‘I was sorry to hear of what happened to your wife.’ He hurried on as he saw my look of inquiry. ‘I read about it in the paper. I thought it must have been your wife—the name was the same and all that.’

I thought he had spent some time hunting me up. Old friends and acquaintances are precious to an alcoholic; they can be touched for the odd drink and the odd fiver.

‘That’s finished and best forgotten,’ I said shortly. Unwittingly, perhaps, he had touched me on the raw—he had brought Jean back. ‘What are you doing now?’

He shrugged. ‘This and that.’

‘You haven’t picked up any gold lately?’ I said cruelly. I wanted to pay him back for putting Jean in my mind.

‘Do I look as though I have?’ he asked bitterly. Unexpectedly, he said, ‘I saw Coertze last week.’

‘Here—in Cape Town?’

‘Yes. He’d just come back from Italy. He’s back in Jo’burg now, I expect.’

I smiled. ‘Did
he
have any gold with him?’

Walker shook his head. ‘He said that nothing’s changed.’ He suddenly gripped me by the arm. ‘The gold’s still there—nobody’s found it. It’s still there—four tons of gold in that tunnel—and all the jewels.’ He had a frantic urgency about him.

‘Well, why doesn’t he do something about it?’ I said. ‘Why doesn’t he go and get it out? Why don’t you both go?’

‘He doesn’t like me,’ said Walker sulkily. ‘He’ll hardly speak to me.’ He took one of my cigarettes from the packet on the counter, and I lit it for him, amusedly. ‘It isn’t easy to get it out of the country,’ he said. ‘Even Sergeant High-and-Mighty Coertze hasn’t found a way.’

He grinned tightly. ‘Imagine that,’ he said, almost gaily. ‘Even the brainy Coertze can’t do it. He put the gold in a hole in the ground and he’s too scared to get it out.’ He began to laugh hysterically.

I took his arm. ‘Take it easy.’

His laughter choked off suddenly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Buy me another drink; I left my wallet at home.’

I crooked my finger at the bartender and Walker ordered another double. I was beginning to understand the reason for his degradation. For fourteen years the knowledge that a fortune in gold was lying in Italy waiting to be picked up had been eating at him like a cancer. Even when I knew him ten years earlier I was aware of the fatal weakness in him, and now one could see that the bitterness of defeat had been too much. I wondered how Coertze was standing up to the strain. At least he seemed to be doing something about it, even if only keeping an eye on the situation.

I said carefully, ‘If Coertze was willing to take you, would you be prepared to go to Italy to get the stuff out?’

He was suddenly very still. ‘What d’you mean?’ he demanded. ‘Have you been talking to Coertze?’

‘I’ve never laid eyes on the man.’

Walker’s glance shifted nervously about the bar, then he straightened. ‘Well, if he…wanted me; if he…needed me—I’d be prepared to go along.’ He said this with bravado but the malice showed through when he said, ‘He needed me once, you know; he needed me when we buried the stuff.’

‘You wouldn’t be afraid of him?’

‘What do you mean—afraid of him? Why should I be afraid of him? I’m afraid of nobody.’

‘You were pretty certain he’d committed at least four murders.’

He seemed put out. ‘Oh that! That was a long time ago. And I never said he’d murdered anybody. I never said it.’

‘No, you never actually said it.’

He shifted nervously on the bar stool. ‘Oh, what’s the use? He won’t ask me to go with him. He said as much last week.’

‘Oh, yes, he will,’ I said softly.

Walker looked up quickly. ‘Why should he?’

I said quietly, ‘Because I know of a way of getting that gold out of Italy and of taking it anywhere in the world, quite simply and relatively safely.’

His eyes widened. ‘What is it? How can you do it?’

‘I’m not going to tell you,’ I said equably. ‘After all, you wouldn’t tell me where the gold’s hidden.’

‘Well, let’s do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you where it is, you get it out, and Bob’s your uncle. Why bring Coertze into it?’

‘It’s a job for more than two men,’ I said. ‘Besides, he deserves a share—he’s been keeping an eye on the gold for fourteen years, which is a damn’ sight more than you’ve been doing.’ I failed to mention that I considered Walker the weakest of reeds. ‘Now, how will you get on with Coertze if this thing goes through?’

He turned sulky. ‘All right, I suppose, if he lays off me. But I won’t stand for any of his sarcasm.’ He looked at me
in wonder as though what we were talking about had just sunk in. ‘You mean there’s a chance we can get the stuff out—a real chance?’

I nodded and got off the bar stool. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘Where are you going?’ he asked quickly.

‘To phone the airline office,’ I said. ‘I want a seat on tomorrow’s Jo’burg plane. I’m going to see Coertze.’

The sign I had been waiting for had arrived.

Air travel is wonderful. At noon the next day I was booking into a hotel in Johannesburg, a thousand miles from Cape Town.

On the plane I had thought a lot about Coertze. I had made up my mind that if he didn’t bite then the whole thing was off—I couldn’t see myself relying on Walker. And I had to decide how to handle him—from Walker’s account he was a pretty tough character. I didn’t mind that; I could be tough myself when the occasion arose, but I didn’t want to antagonize him. He would probably be as suspicious as hell, and I’d need kid gloves.

Then there was another thing—the financing of the expedition. I wanted to hang on to the boatyard as insurance in case this whole affair flopped, but I thought if I cut Harry Marshall in for a partnership in the yard, sold my house and my car and one or two other things, I might be able to raise about £25,000—not too much for what I had in mind.

But it all depended on Coertze. I smiled when I considered where he was working. He had a job in Central Smelting Plant which refined gold from all the mines on the Reef. More gold had probably passed through his hands in the last few years than all the Axis war-lords put together had buried throughout the world.

It must have been tantalizing for him.

I phoned the smelting plant in the afternoon. There was a pause before he came on the line. ‘Coertze,’ he said briefly.

I came to the point. ‘My name’s Halloran,’ I said. ‘A mutual friend—Mr Walker of Cape Town—tells me you have been experiencing difficulty in arranging for the delivery of goods from Italy. I’m in the import-export business; I thought I might be able to help you.’

A deep silence bored into my ear.

I said, ‘My firm is fully equipped to do this sort of work. We never have much trouble with the Customs in cases like these.’

It was like dropping a stone into a very deep well and listening for the splash.

‘Why don’t you come to see me,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to take up your time now; I’m sure you’re a busy man. Come at seven this evening and we’ll discuss your difficulties over dinner. I’m staying at the Regency—it’s in Berea, in…’

‘I know where it is,’ said Coertze. His voice was deep and harsh with a guttural Afrikaans accent.

‘Good; I’ll be expecting you,’ I said, and put down the phone.

I was pleased with this first contact. Coertze was suspicious and properly so—he’d have been a fool not to be. But if he came to the hotel he’d be hooked, and all I had to do would be to jerk on the line and set the hook in firmly.

I was pretty certain he’d come; human curiosity would see to that. If he didn’t come, then he wouldn’t be human—or he’d be superhuman.

He came, but not at seven o’clock and I was beginning to doubt my judgement of the frailty of human nature. It was after eight when he knocked on the door, identified me, and said, ‘We’ll forget the dinner; I’ve eaten.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But what about a drink?’ I crossed the room and put my hand on the brandy bottle. I was
pretty certain it would be brandy—most South Africans drink it.

‘I’ll have a Scotch,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Thanks,’ he added as an afterthought.

As I poured the drinks I glanced at him. He was a bulky man, broad of chest and heavy in the body. His hair was black and rather coarse and he had a shaggy look about him. I’d bet that when stripped he’d look like a grizzly bear. His eyebrows were black and straight over eyes of a snapping electric blue. He had looked after himself better than Walker; his belly was flat and there was a sheen of health about him.

I handed him a drink and we sat down facing each other. He was tense and wary, although he tried to disguise it by over-relaxing in his chair. We were like a couple of duellists who have just engaged blades.

‘I’ll come to the point,’ I said. ‘A long time ago Walker told me a very interesting story about some gold. That was ten years ago and we were going to do something about it, but it didn’t pan out. That might have been lucky because we’d have certainly made a botch of the job.’

I pointed my finger at him. ‘You’ve been keeping an eye on it. You’ve probably popped across to Italy from time to time just to keep your eye on things in general. You’ve been racking your brains trying to think of a way of getting that gold out of Italy, but you haven’t been able to do it. You’re stymied.’

His face had not changed expression; he would have made a good poker player. He said, ‘When did you see Walker?’

‘Yesterday—in Cape Town.’

The craggy face broke into a derisive grin. ‘And you flew up to Jo’burg to see me just because a
dronkie
like Walker told you a cock-and-bull story like that? Walker’s a no-good hobo; I see a dozen like him in the Library Gardens every day,’ he said contemptuously.

‘It’s not a cock-and-bull story, and I can prove it.’

Coertze just sat and looked at me like a stone gargoyle, the whisky glass almost lost in his huge fist.

I said, ‘What are you doing here—in this room? If there was no story, all you had to do was to ask me what the hell I was talking about when I spoke to you on the phone. The fact that you’re here proves there’s something in it.’

He made a fast decision. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What’s your proposition?’

I said, ‘You still haven’t figured a way of moving four tons of gold out of Italy. Is that right?’

He smiled slowly. ‘Let’s assume so,’ he said ironically.

‘I’ve got a foolproof way.’

He put down his glass and produced a packet of cigarettes. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m not going to tell you—yet.’

He grinned. ‘Walker hasn’t told you where the gold is, has he?’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ I admitted. ‘But he would if I put pressure on him. Walker can’t stand pressure; you know that.’

‘He drinks too much,’ said Coertze. ‘And when he drinks he talks; I’ll bet that’s how he came to spill his guts to you.’ He lit his cigarette. ‘What do you want out of it?’

‘Equal shares,’ I said firmly. ‘A three-way split after all expenses have been paid.’

‘And Walker comes with us on the job. Is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Coertze moved in his chair. ‘Man, it’s like this,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you’ve got a foolproof way of getting the gold out or if you haven’t. I thought
I
had it licked a couple of times. But let’s assume your way is going to work. Why should we take Walker?’

He held up his hand. ‘I’m not suggesting we do him down or anything like that—although he’d think nothing of
cheating us. Give him his share after it’s all over, but for God’s sake keep him out of Italy. He’ll make a balls-up for sure.’

I thought of Harrison and Parker and the two Italians. ‘You don’t seem to like him.’

Coertze absently fingered a scar on his forehead. ‘He’s unreliable,’ he said. ‘He almost got me killed a couple of times during the war.’

I said, ‘No, we take Walker. I don’t know for certain if three of us can pull it off, and with two it would be impossible. Unless you want to let someone else in?’

He smiled humourlessly. ‘That’s not on—not with you coming in. But Walker had better keep his big mouth shut from now on.’

‘Perhaps it would be better if he stopped drinking,’ I suggested.

‘That’s right,’ Coertze agreed. ‘Keep him off the pots. A few beers are all right, but keep him off the hard-tack. That’ll be your job; I don’t want to have anything to do with the rat.’

He blew smoke into the air, and said, ‘Now let’s hear your proposition. If it’s good, I’ll come in with you. If I don’t think it’ll work, I won’t touch it. In that case, you and Walker can do what you damn’ well like, but if you go for that gold you’ll have me to reckon with. I’m a bad bastard when I’m crossed.’

‘So am I,’ I said.

We grinned at each other. I liked this man, in a way. I wouldn’t trust him any more than I’d trust Walker, but I had the feeling that while Walker would stick a knife in your back, Coertze would at least shoot you down from the front.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s have it.’

‘I’m not going to tell you—not here in this room,’ I saw his expression and hurried on. ‘It isn’t that I don’t trust you,
it’s simply that you wouldn’t believe it. You have to see it—and you have to see it in Cape Town.’

He looked at me for a long moment, then said, ‘All right, if that’s the way you want it, I’ll play along.’ He paused to think. ‘I’ve got a good job here, and I’m not going to give it up on your say-so. There’s a long week-end coming up—that gives me three days off. I’ll fly down to Cape Town to see what you have to show me. If it’s good, the job can go hang; if it isn’t, then I’ve still got the job.’

‘I’ll pay for your fare,’ I said.

‘I can afford it,’ he grunted.

‘If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll pay for your fare,’ I insisted. ‘I wouldn’t want you to be out of pocket.’

He looked up and grinned. ‘We’ll get along,’ he said. ‘Where’s that bottle?’

As I was pouring another couple of drinks, he said, ‘You said you were going to Italy with Walker. What stopped you?’

I took the clipping from my pocket and passed it to him. He read it and laughed. ‘That must have scared Walker. I was there at the time,’ he said unexpectedly.

‘In Italy?’

He sipped the Scotch and nodded. ‘Yes; I saved my army back-pay and my gratuity and went back in ‘48. As soon as I got there all hell started popping about this trial. I read about it in the papers and you never heard such a lot of bull in your life. Still, I thought I’d better lie low, so I had a
lekker
holiday with the Count.’

‘With the Count?’ I said in surprise.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I stay with the Count every time I go to Italy. I’ve been there four times now.’

I said, ‘How did you reckon to dispose of the gold once you got it out of Italy?’

‘I’ve got all that planned,’ he said confidently. ‘They’re always wanting gold in India and you get a good price.
You’d be surprised at the amount of gold smuggled out of this country in small packets that ends up in India.’

He was right—India is the gold sink of the world—but I said casually, ‘My idea is to go the other way—to Tangier. It’s an open port with an open gold market. You should be able to sell four tons of gold there quite easily—and it’s legal, too. No trouble with the police.’

He looked at me with respect. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know much about this international finance.’

‘There’s a snag,’ I said. ‘Tangier is closing up shop next year; it’s being taken over by Morocco. Then it won’t be a free port any more and the gold market will close.’

‘When next year?’

‘April 19,’ I said. ‘Nine months from now. I think we’ll just about have enough time.’

He smiled. ‘I never thought about selling the gold legally; I didn’t think you could. I thought the governments had got all that tied up. Maybe I should have met you sooner.’

‘It wouldn’t have done you any good,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t the brains then that I have now.’

He laughed and we proceeded to kill the bottle.

Coertze came down to Cape Town two weeks later. I met him at the airport and drove him directly to the yard, where Walker was waiting.

Walker seemed to shrink into himself when I told him that Coertze was visiting us. In spite of his braggart boasts, I could see he didn’t relish close contact. If half of what he had said about Coertze was true, then he had every reason to be afraid.

Come to think of it—so had I!

It must have been the first time that Coertze had been in a boatyard and he looked about him with keen interest and asked a lot of questions, nearly all of them sensible. At last, he said, ‘Well, what about it?’

I took them down to the middle slip where Jimmy Murphy’s
Estralita
was waiting to be drawn up for an overhaul. ‘That’s a sailing yacht,’ I said. ‘A 15-tonner. What would you say her draft it—I mean, how deep is she in the water?’

Coertze looked her over and then looked up at the tall mast. ‘She’ll need to be deep to counterbalance that lot,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know how much. I don’t know anything about boats.’

Considering he didn’t know anything about boats, it was a very sensible answer.

‘Her draft is six feet in normal trim,’ I said. ‘She’s drawing less now because a lot of gear has been taken out of her.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I’d have thought it would be more than that,’ he said. ‘What happens when the wind blows hard on the sails? Won’t she tip over?’

This was going well and Coertze was on the ball. I said, ‘I have a boat like this just being built, another 15-tonner. Come and have a look at her.’

I led the way up to the shed where
Sanford
was being built and Coertze followed, apparently content that I was leading up to a point. Walker tagged on behind.

I had pressed to get
Sanford
completed and she was ready for launching as soon as the glass-fibre sheathing was applied and the interior finished.

Coertze looked up at her. ‘They look bloody big out of the water,’ he commented.

I smiled. That was the usual lay reaction. ‘Come aboard,’ I said.

He was impressed by the spaciousness he found below and commented favourably on the way things were arranged. ‘Did you design all this?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘You could live in here, all right,’ he said, inspecting the galley.

‘You could—and you will,’ I said. ‘This is the boat in which we’re going to take four tons of gold out of Italy.’

He looked surprised and then he frowned. ‘Where are you going to put it?’

I said, ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you something about sailing boats you don’t know.’ Coertze sat uncomfortably on the edge of the starboard settee which had no mattress as yet, and waited for me to explain myself.

‘This boat displaces—weighs, that is—ten tons, and…’

Walker broke in. ‘I thought you said she was a 15-tonner.’

‘That’s Thames measure—yacht measure. Her displacement is different.’

Coertze looked at Walker. ‘Shut up and let the man speak.’ He turned to me. ‘If the boat weighs ten tons and you add another four tons, she’ll be pretty near sinking, won’t she? And where are you going to put it? It can’t be out in the open where the cops can see it.’